At Tio Lucho’s, the Peruvian restaurant Arnaldo Castillo opened in Poncey-Highland in 2022, there’s a fried grouper dish finished with cau-cau salsa, a seafood sauce rich with memory. His father, Luis, used to make it. It’s not revolutionary, but Castillo still puts it on the menu from time to time because cooking it feels like having his dad in the kitchen with him.
Ask Castillo what it means to have moved his cooking from Buford Highway, where his father worked as a cook and caterer, to one of intown Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods, and he doesn’t get sentimental about it.
“I have made more strides in my career than my father,” Castillo said. “I have had opportunities and achievements that my father never had, but I owe it to his relentless pursuit in taking care of his family that I am able to do what I do. That is generational wealth.”
That comment points to an emerging trend in Atlanta: the city’s most interesting cooking has been slowly moving out of the immigrant corridor that produced it. Buford Highway has always fed Atlanta—for years, it’s where we’ve sent visiting friends who wanted something they couldn’t find anywhere else, a crop of strip malls holding some of the most serious Vietnamese, Korean, and Latin American food in the Southeast.
Now, we’re seeing the next chapter in that story. The corridor doesn’t just feed diners anymore; it’s training the chefs now running dining rooms in Poncey-Highland, in Grant Park, and in other central neighborhoods that draw a different type of crowd.
Learning to Cook on Buford Highway
Castillo’s father, Luis, was born in Lima, on Peru’s northern coast. Known as Tio Lucho to those closest to him, Luis brought that coastal Peruvian cooking to Atlanta. He raised his son in that tradition through Buford Highway restaurant kitchens, starting when Arnaldo was 16. The lessons were practical.
Asked what’s stuck with him longest from working alongside his dad, Castillo said, “Tuck your fingers in when chopping onions.” It’s a basic instruction, but it’s about paying attention to the task at hand—literally—and not getting careless.
Castillo went on to work in a run of well-regarded Atlanta kitchens: Minero, Pura Vida, Empire State South, and Little Trouble, which he also helped open. Of those, he points to Hugh Acheson’s Empire State South as the one that changed how he cooks.
“The chef-driven restaurant had a very strong focus on working with as many local producers as possible, introducing global flavors and techniques to Atlanta, and being a champion of good slow food,” he said.
He’s candid that the job itself was hard, with long hours and modest pay, but says the exposure to technique, ingredients, and hospitality is what he took from it. “That created a strong work ethic in me.”
From Pop-Up to Tio Lucho’s
Like Castillo, Tio Lucho’s came from humble roots. It was born out of La Chingana, the pop-up Castillo ran for about a year, mixing Peruvian flavors with Southern ingredients at ticketed tasting menus and private dinners. He had a plan: pop-up first, brick-and-mortar as soon as he could line up investors or partners. But what he learned that year was more about his audience than his business plan.
“Atlantans are down to try something new if it’s authentic but also approachable,” he said. That’s still his goal at Tio Lucho’s, to tie Peruvian and Southern cultures together through food, while keeping it fun.
Opening Tio Lucho’s Two Weeks After Losing His Father
That goal didn’t account for the timing of the opening. Tio Lucho’s opened just two weeks after Luis Castillo died. Castillo is direct about how hard that was. “It was honestly the hardest thing to do, because I did not process the loss,” he said.
He flew home for a week to help his mother and settle his father’s affairs, running the restaurant’s opening by phone and email in the meantime. He came back, opened the restaurant, and later, with his wife’s support, went to therapy to deal with what he’d put off. “I closed a chapter to help me evolve into the next,” he said.
The restaurant’s name is a direct reference to that loss. “I have always said that everyone will know Tio Lucho’s is named after my father, Luis Castillo, and I get to feel his presence and love every time I step in the restaurant,” he said.
Keeping His Father’s Cooking on the Menu
Most of the menu is Castillo’s own read on Peruvian food, filtered through his Southern upbringing. But every so often a dish shows up that’s clearly his father’s—the fried grouper with cau-cau salsa chief among them. It’s a small, deliberate gesture in a restaurant that’s otherwise built around Castillo’s own point of view, one that runs from Piura through Buford Highway to Poncey-Highland.
Tio Lucho’s, 675 N. Highland Ave. NE Ste. 6000, Atlanta, tioluchos.com
